When Never Comes

by Barbara Davis

  Christy-Lynn had watched from her bedroom window as they loaded the girl onto a stretcher and then into an ambulance, siren screaming as the flashing red lights sped away into the darkness. Even if she lived, she wouldn’t be coming back. Not to this house.

  Down the hall there are two other residents, a pair of brothers, Terry and Todd Blevins, whose parents died when their trailer exploded while they were cooking up a batch of meth. They’re the thickset, sullen sort—mouth breathers, Dana called them—and Christy-Lynn is careful to give them a wide berth. She doesn’t like the way the oldest brother’s eyes follow her, lingering just a little too long for comfort.

  The one thing they have in common is that none of them have any hope of finding a forever family. Forever family. It’s the stomach-turning term some caseworkers use for adoption, as if they’re corgis or cocker spaniels instead of human beings. Kids who end up in foster care already have two strikes against them, but toss in the potential for alcohol, drugs, and unwanted pregnancy, and a teen’s pretty much guaranteed to remain in the system until the clock runs out, and they’re finally kicked loose on their eighteenth birthday, often without a job or a cent to their name.

  Not that Christy-Lynn wants a forever family. It’s too late for that. She only wants to be left alone, to finish school, then find a way to get into college so she can get a decent job and never have to depend on anyone but herself. But she’s in a holding pattern now, caught in a bureaucratic limbo where every kid is treated the same—a mouth to feed, a soul to save, a government check to collect.

  But it’s how things are. Nothing to do but wait and wonder while her mother serves her time. Her lawyer—the one the court appointed—was saying three years, maybe eighteen months with time off for good behavior. And then what? Would she keep her promise when she got out? Or would it just be a repeat of the same old nightmare, like the movie Groundhog Day where Bill Murray wakes up every morning to the same old hell?

  The thought of going back to that life sends a chill through her. Not that she’ll have much choice if it comes to that. Eighteen months from now, she’ll still be a minor. They’ll make her go back to her mother, and that will be that.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Sweetwater, Virginia

  June 3, 2017

  Wade pulled up Christy-Lynn’s number once more and hit “Send.” His last three calls had gone straight to voice mail, and he’d had to settle for leaving a message, asking only half jokingly if she was upside down in a ditch somewhere. He was surprised this time when she actually picked up.

  “Hey, it’s Wade. I thought you were going to call me.”

  “I know. I’m sorry. I just wasn’t in the mood to talk to anyone.”

  “You went back, I take it?”

  “I had to.”

  “If you say so.”

  “Please don’t be snarky.”

  Wade instantly regretted the remark. She sounded as if she’d been crying, her voice dull and ragged. “Sorry. Tell me what happened.”

  “I don’t think I can. Not now. I just walked through the door, and I’ve been driving all day. I’m beat.”

  “Sounds like you need a meal and a good night’s sleep.”

  “There isn’t much in the house, and there’s no way I’m going back out. I’ll settle for a hot bath and good night’s sleep. That work for you?”

  “Right, I get it. I’m nagging. Go then. Get in your tub.”

  Forty-five minutes later, Wade found himself standing on Christy-Lynn’s front porch with a bag of takeout from Lotus. He’d be lucky if she didn’t dump it over his head, but he was willing to risk it. She had looked a bit frayed around the edges the day she left, and the last forty-eight hours couldn’t have done her much good.

  He was still trying to come up with an excuse for popping by unannounced when she opened the door, wearing a white terry-cloth robe cinched at the waist. Her hair was wet, and she smelled of shampoo, like rainwater or the sea.

  “Hello,” he said thickly. “How was your bath?”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I brought food.” He held out the bag as proof. “I wasn’t sure what you liked, so I got an assortment. There’s lo mein, shrimp and vegetables, and cashew chicken. Oh, and soup. You sounded like you needed soup. It’s on top, and it’s hot, so be careful.”

  She took the bag, looking dumbfounded. “There’s ten pounds of food here.”

  He smiled sheepishly. “Leftovers.”

  “Wait,” she said as he turned to go. “You’re not staying?”

  “I’m not here to invite myself to dinner. I just wanted to make sure you got some food.”

  “I’m inviting you. Just watch where you walk. It’s kind of a mess in here.”

  Wade navigated a maze of cardboard boxes as he followed her through the living room. The place looked like a warehouse, jammed with furniture, knickknacks, and half-packed cartons. “What’s going on? Are you moving?”

  “Redecorating. Carol was in such a hurry to get to Florida she left almost everything behind, and with the store opening, I haven’t had time to get through it all. I’ve been packing most of it up for Goodwill, which explains the boxes. I’m thinking about updating the bathroom and kitchen. I want to hang on to the vintage feel. Missy thinks her cousin Hank might be able to handle it. There’s just so much to get rid of first.”

  Any first-year reporter could see what was going on. She was keeping up a steady stream of conversation, moving around the room so she wouldn’t have to look at him. It was classic avoidance, and after the last two days, she had a right to that. Tonight, they’d talk about what she wanted to talk about.

  He peered into one of the nearby boxes, eyeing chipped plates and battered pots and pans. “I know about having to get rid of stuff. When I moved to the cabin, there was a ton of my grandfather’s stuff to clear out. It was weird, sorting through broken mugs and stray gloves, wondering when he thought he was ever going to need any of it.”

  Christy-Lynn was unpacking the takeout containers, removing their cardboard lids and setting them out on the table. She paused to look at him. “Maybe it wasn’t about needing them. People hold on to all kinds of things, silly things, even broken things, because of the memories attached to them.”

  Wade studied her as he digested her words. In the kitchen light, her face looked puffy and mottled, her eyes raw and red-rimmed. She’d been crying, for hours by the look of it. “I’m more of a clean break guy myself. People like to dig up the bodies, anguish over mistakes. What’s the point? The water’s poisoned. There’s no cleaning it up after it’s done. The only thing you can do is walk away—and set fire to your bridges.”

  Christy-Lynn stared at him, clearly mystified. “Am I supposed to know what that means?”

  Wade shrugged the question off. As usual, he’d said too much. Not everyone saw the merits of a scorched-earth policy. “It doesn’t mean anything,” he said finally. “It’s just an expression. A work thing.”

  It was a lie, of course. In leaving New York, he’d set fire to more than just his career. He really had tried to make it work with Simone, though in retrospect he couldn’t imagine why he’d bothered. He had shelved his writing and knuckled down at Review, earning a shelf full of awards and all the perks that came with them. For a while, he had even convinced himself they were happy. But neither of them had been able to sustain the illusion. The truth was a happy ending had never been in the cards.

  An awkward silence fell as they swapped containers and spooned out portions, the quiet heavy with unasked questions and surreptitious glances. Finally, Christy-Lynn set down her fork and looked at him across the table. “This isn’t working, is it?”

  Wade looked up from his eggroll. “What?”

  “Us not talking.”

  “I’d be lying if I said I’m not worried about you.”

  Her face shuttered suddenly, as if she had tucked her emotions away for safekeeping. “You don’t need to be. I found out what I wanted to kn
ow, and now I’m going to get on with my life, like everyone’s been telling me to.”

  Her robe had loosened, offering a glimpse of pale shoulder. He forced his eyes back to her face. “Why don’t I believe you?”

  She shot him an unconvincing smile, waving a vague hand at the mess in the living room. “Look around. This is what getting on with my life looks like.”

  “That’s the external stuff. I’m talking about the internal stuff.”

  Christy-Lynn picked up her fork again, eyes on her plate as she toyed with a sliver of carrot. “I’m working on that part. The last two days have been . . . hard, but I finally got all the whens and wheres. Now I can move on.”

  “What about the whys?”

  She shrugged. “He was a man. She was a woman. The why speaks for itself.”

  “And the girl? Iris?”

  “Inevitable, I suppose.”

  He looked at her, not bothering to hide his skepticism. “So that’s it? You’re ready to just . . . move on?”

  “Yes.”

  Wade raked a hand through his hair, wondering who she was trying to convince, herself or him. “Look, I know I’ve been telling you to stop torturing yourself, but I didn’t mean like this. You can’t just pretend you don’t have feelings if you do.”

  Christy-Lynn tossed down her fork with a clatter. “Of course I have feelings. But what am I supposed to do with them? There’s no way to walk it back, is there? No way to put the genie back in the bottle. No one to even rail at since Stephen’s dead. There’s just this little girl with no parents!”

  The words rang sharply off the walls of the kitchen, shimmering hotly in the small space. Wade watched her, startled and uncertain as she went very still, head lowered, a hand pressed to her mouth. She was shaking visibly. Eventually, she opened her eyes. He pushed back his plate and folded his arms on the edge of the table.

  “What happened today, Christy-Lynn?”

  Her eyes slid away, looking everywhere but at him. “He wanted her,” she said softly.

  “Honey?”

  Her eyes drifted back to his, weary and full of sadness. “Iris. Honey considered . . . not having her, but Stephen changed her mind. I wasn’t expecting that.” She wiped the sleeve of her robe across her eyes, then bounced out of her chair. “Coffee?”

  Wade blinked at her, startled by the abrupt change of subject, and by a newly improved view of her left shoulder. He dragged his eyes away to check his watch. “Sure. Why not? I’m basically immune to caffeine at this point.”

  He watched as she scooped coffee into the basket, his professional sonar pinging off the charts. He could feel the carefully checked emotions, tamped down good and tight but bubbling hard beneath the surface. Anger mixed with confusion wrapped in betrayal. But there was something else too, something he couldn’t quite put a finger on.

  She returned to the table a few moments later and handed him a mug. “Sugar only, right?”

  She had tightened the belt of her robe so that her shoulder was no longer exposed. He wasn’t sure if he was relieved or disappointed. “You’ve been paying attention. I’m flattered.”

  “You’ve been drinking coffee in my café for two months now.”

  “True enough. Now sit.”

  He was surprised when she actually dropped back into her chair without protest, her mug cradled between her palms.

  “What’s going on? What haven’t you told me?”

  “We didn’t have kids,” she said simply.

  Wade looked at her over the rim of his mug. He wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting, but it wasn’t that. “How is that relevant?”

  “It just is.”

  He waited, watching as she blew on her coffee, then sipped slowly. She was still stalling, tossing out lame responses, but she was getting there.

  “I was the one who didn’t want kids.”

  “And Stephen did?”

  “If he did, he never said so. We talked about it before we got married—about not doing the family thing—and he seemed fine with it, maybe even a little relieved. But he could have changed his mind. Some men do.”

  Wade sat with the words a moment, mentally tugging at several loose threads. “You’re saying if you’d had a baby Stephen wouldn’t have cheated?”

  She shrugged. “They say a man with kids is less likely to cheat because he has more to feel guilty about.”

  Wade paused midsip, stunned by what he’d just heard. “That may just be the biggest load of crap I’ve ever heard. Guys who cheat don’t do it because they’re dying to be family men, Christy-Lynn. They do it because they’re alley cats.”

  “What about you? Did you want . . . my God, I never even thought to ask. Do you have kids?”

  “No. But I wanted them eventually. I mean that’s part of it, right—raising a family? But our lives were so crazy. That’s one of the reasons I wanted off the media merry-go-round. I wanted to slow things down, see what else life had to offer. Simone had other plans. No way was she slowing down to change diapers.”

  “You could have though,” Christy-Lynn pointed out. “You could have been a stay-at-home dad.”

  “And I would have. I was ready for a change. But that wasn’t the life Simone signed up for. We never had the conversation before we got married. I guess she thought I felt the same way she did about the job. She loved the sleuthing, camping out in front of some guy’s apartment in hopes that he’d sneak out for cigarettes or a newspaper, and then bam. Full-scale ambush.”

  “Yes, I know the drill.”

  “Sorry, I forgot. I used to think she was just dedicated, you know? Change-the-world dedicated. But as time went on, I saw another side of her, a darker side. The chase, the constant adrenaline rush. It became like a drug for her, and I didn’t want any part of that. Which is why I eventually walked away. Stephen could have done the same if he wasn’t happy. Instead, he snuck around behind your back and fathered a child with another woman, a daughter you still wouldn’t know about if he hadn’t driven off a bridge with a half-naked woman in his car.”

  “Thanks for the recap,” Christy-Lynn said dully.

  Wade sighed, mentally kicking himself. Nice going, jackass.

  “I’m sorry. I was just trying to make a point, which is that none of this is your fault. There was something about Stephen, something that made it okay to cross whatever line he wanted, even if it meant hurting people. He did it to me back in college. And now he’s done it to you. I couldn’t understand it back then. How could he stab a friend in the back and never bat an eye? Now I realize it was his pattern. I also realize it had nothing to do with me. Or you. It was him. He didn’t care about anyone but himself.”

  “He cared enough to persuade Honey not to end the pregnancy,” Christy-Lynn said as she rose to refill her mug. “I can’t help thinking that if things had been different Iris might have been our daughter, and there would never have been a Honey Rawlings.”

  Wade eyed her with open skepticism. “How would that have worked? You didn’t even want kids, remember? In fact, it sounds like you gave the matter quite a lot of thought, though you never said why.”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “And you’re not going to.”

  “No,” she said flatly. “And it’s water under the bridge now, isn’t it?”

  Wade nodded. “Fair enough. And I wasn’t judging. I was just curious.”

  “I know you weren’t. It just gets old, you know? Always defending your choices. No one ever imagines your reasons might be well thought out, that it might actually be the least selfish choice you’ll ever make. Not all of us believe our lives are meaningless unless we reproduce.”

  “Of course you don’t.”

  Christy-Lynn sighed, running a hand through her hair. “It’s just a sore spot for me right now.” She set her mug on the counter and crossed to the sliding glass door, arms folded over her chest as she stood facing her own reflection. “I can’t get her face out of my head. She has Stephen’s chin, that crazy dimpl
e right in the middle. But she looks like Honey too. She’s beautiful.”

  Wade let out a very long breath, lost as to how to respond. “I can’t imagine how hard all this must be.”

  She turned back to him, her face near crumpling. “She barely speaks. Did I tell you that? Since the accident, she barely says a word. And she has nightmares. She’s afraid everyone’s going to leave her. And she’s right. Rhetta’s got to be eighty, and she isn’t well. And her uncle . . .” Her voice choked down to a whisper. “There’s a good chance she’ll end up in foster care.”

  The tears came in earnest then, sliding silently down her cheeks, as if she was entirely unaware of them. Wade stared at her in astonishment. How was it possible that after everything, she could stand there gulping back tears for the child who embodied her husband’s betrayal?

  He swallowed a groan, scrambling for something to say that wouldn’t come off sounding pompous or condescending, but came up empty. And so he let her cry. Because she needed to, and because he didn’t know what else to do.

  Feeling helpless and desperate to make himself useful, he began closing up the takeout containers, gathering plates and silverware. After a few moments, Christy-Lynn blotted her eyes on the sleeve of her robe and moved to the sink. Neither spoke as they did the dishes, but the rhythm of the simple domestic act seemed to smooth the tension. When the dishes were stowed and the counters wiped, she turned to him.

  “I’m sorry about tonight. You came over and did this nice thing, and all I did was weep into my soup. It’s all I seem to be doing lately—crying.”

  “I’d say under the circumstances you’re entitled, although I do prefer you when you’re not crying.” He reached for the takeout bag on the counter, preparing to toss it when he noticed it wasn’t empty. “Hey, look, we forgot the fortune cookies.” He handed her one, then tore into his, snapping it in half to fish out the small bit of paper.

  “Do not confuse activity with accomplishment.” He scowled as he crumpled the fortune and dropped it into the bag. “Appropriate for an aspiring novelist, don’t you think? Now you.”